Sir Bernard Jenkin

It gives me a certain pleasure to share some agreement about the need for more resource in defence and resilience with the hon. Member for Warwick and Leamington (Matt Western). For all the Government’s talk of increasing spending on defence, the vast bulk of the promise they have made is after this spending period, and the small increase that has been allowed for in these spending plans is not even sufficient to make up for the problems that the Ministry of Defence has managing its own programmes. There is now a huge row going on there about what it is going to have to cut in order to stay within the spending envelop set by the Treasury. It is not a new problem, but it is a significant one, and it is one that underlines the need for the Ministry of Defence to adapt to a very different climate—a much more warlike and adaptive system for acquiring military kit. The great theme of this Budget and the last, to which the hon. Member for Warwick and Leamington referred, is growth. I think we need to be realistic that the growth rate was flattened by the global financial crisis of 2008-09, and our productivity rate never recovered from that period. It is a puzzle. It is partly because our economy is more and more service orientated, which is labour intensive, but I think it is also because we have expanded the public sector so dramatically in recent years. Public sector productivity is way below what it was before covid—it has not recovered. The productivity of the national health service is lamentable. These are issues of leadership, organisation and efficiency. The Government need to look at getting much better value for money for what we are spending, given that this country now has the highest ever peacetime levels of public expenditure.